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Opinion Contributor

Voting Rights Act provision again has day in court

The authors say methods of discrimination have also become more sophisticated. | Reuters

By REP. JIM SENSENBRENNER and REP. JOHN CONYERS | 2/26/13 9:31 PM EST

On Sunday, March 7, 1965, some 600 peaceful civil rights activists gathered in Selma, Ala., to march for equality and the right to vote. What began as a nonviolent protest, ended with an outburst of violence by state police employing billy clubs and tear gas, broadcast on television into homes across the nation. These images galvanized Congress to enact the Voting Rights Act on Aug. 6, 1965.

Just days before the 48th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” the Supreme Court will review Congress’s authority under the Constitution to reauthorize Section 5, a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that requires covered jurisdictions to “preclear” voting changes with the Department of Justice or a federal court. Section 5 is important because it shifts the burden of proof to jurisdictions that have a serious demonstrated history of discrimination, protecting the rights of minority voters from protracted litigation.

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Legal challenges to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act have routinely been made after Congress has reauthorized the statute; this is the fifth challenge to reauthorization. The Supreme Court first affirmed the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in 1966, after the state of South Carolina sought to have the act declared unconstitutional in South Carolina v. Katzenbach. In that case, the court upheld the entire Voting Rights Act as a legitimate exercise of Congress’s powers under the 15th Amendment and cited Congress’s careful study and the “voluminous legislative history” underlying the Voting Rights Act as a basis for upholding it. The Congress continued this careful study prior to each reauthorization.

In 1970, 1975 and 1982, Congress again gathered and analyzed extensive facts, conducting dozens of hearings, taking testimony from hundreds of witnesses and amassing a record of thousands of pages during each reauthorization process, with each documenting significant ongoing discrimination and revealing that covered jurisdictions continued to devise tactics to suppress effective minority participation. In 2006, our committee undertook a similar study, compiling an extensive record that totaled more than 15,000 pages, spanned 20 hearings and included testimony from 96 witnesses representing interests ranging from federal and state executive officials to civil rights leaders.